Indeed, Vista appears to be over controlling--understatment. Sadly, the masses (typical users) won't have a clue until it's too late. What's galling is that Microsoft will have the power to neuter my (HDMI) hardware if they believe (even mistakenly) that I'm dorking around with the SDR encryption. Feck'n-A !

BTW, Gutmann updates his paper every so often. Consequently, the original link is disabled for a wee bit.

In order to prevent the creation of hardware emulators of protected output devices, Vista requires a Hardware Functionality Scan (HFS) that can be used to uniquely fingerprint a hardware device to ensure that it's (probably) genuine. In order to do this, the driver on the host PC performs an operation in the hardware (for example rendering 3D content in a graphics card) that produces a result that's unique to that device type.

In order for this to work, the spec requires that the operational details of the device be kept confidential. Obviously anyone who knows enough about the workings of a device to operate it and to write a third-party driver for it (for example one for an open-source OS, or in general just any non-Windows OS) will also know enough to fake the HFS process. The only way to protect the HFS process therefore is to not release any technical details on the device beyond a minimum required for web site reviews and comparison with other products."

As a tension breaker, Gutmann surreptitiously quotes a prophetic line from Star Wars:

"Perhaps Hollywood should heed the advice given in one of their most famousproductions: 'The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slipthrough your fingers'."

--Nong

-- "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anythingoriginal." -- Sir Ken Robinson

That is one of the most disturbing things I've read, and I've been in
this industry a LONG time. There's enough stuff in there to get me tocategorically refuse to recommend/purchase/install Vista on any systemover which I have any administrative control, and I'm less than halfway
through it.